"Out of Memory Error (Java)" when using R and XLConnect package

Question

I tried to load a ~30MB excel spreadsheet into R using the XLConnect package.

This is what I wrote:

wb <- loadWorkbook("largespreadsheet.xlsx") 

And after about 15 seconds, I got the following error:

Error: OutOfMemoryError (Java): GC overhead limit exceeded.

Is this a limitation of the XLConnect package or is there a way to tweak my memory settings to allow for larger files?

I appreciate any solutions/tips/advice.

Answer 1

Follow the advice from their website:

options(java.parameters = "-Xmx1024m") library(XLConnect) 

Answer 2

If you still have problems with importing XLSX files you can use this opiton. Anwser with "Xmx1024m" didn't work and i changed to "-Xmx4g".

options(java.parameters = "-Xmx4g" ) library(XLConnect) 

This link was useful.